R community update: announcing New Delhi useR meetup group

Over the past few years, R’s adoption has grown rapidly throughout the world. Much of it can be attributed to the growth of ‘data science’ as a domain. But R’s popularity primarily exists because of its amazing community and their contributions. Be it through open source development, Twitter (#rstats), discussion forums or programs such as Google Summer of Code (GSoC), there are numerous channels for beginners and practitioners to interact with each other.

I’ve had the opportunity to interact with members from R ecosystem through the previously mentioned channels. It has been wonderful to say the least. However, despite increasing popularity and user-base in India, the local community aspect has largely been missing. Even New Delhi, nation’s capital and a startup hub, lacks a strong community. There’d been efforts in the past to organize meetups and conferences but nothing really worked out. To address this, some R practitioners from the region have started a useRmeetupgroup. We plan to host regular meetings, bring together existing R users and help introduce the language to beginners. You can find the meetup page link here.

Also, we’re grateful to the R consortium for their support to the group through the R User Group and Small Conference Support Program. List of other groups which are part of the program can be found here. You can find more information about the program on their website.

In addition to members, we’re also looking for speakers. Although we would prefer speakers to be present on venue, webinars can also work out. If you have useful ideas/learnings to share with the group or know someone else who could do the same, please reach out through mail or start a discussion on the meetup page.

Again, do join the group if you want to be a part of this community. Here’s hoping to the community’s success.